Italian pasta is amazing.
You need only 3-4 quality ingredients, 15 minutes of preparation and
a delicious, wholesome meal is ready. That's why I was happy to take part in a free pasta workshop organized last week in Piri Piri restaurant in
Kraków.
The workshop was lead by
Maciej Wawryniuk, a culinary consultant of Kamis, a Polish company
producing spices. Together with a few other chefs, he cooked various
pasta dishes, at the same time giving us some culinary advice.
Here are a few tips I
remembered:
1. Shape and type of
pasta have to complement the sauce. For example spaghetti, which is
probably the most popular pasta in Poland, doesn't go well with all
the flavours, so it's worth trying also other pasta types, such as
penne ('feather' in Italian), fettuccine ('little ribbons') or
farfalle (butterflies).
2. If you don't want your
pasta to stick together, you should cook it in plenty of water. Don't
add any oil as it's considered by many Italians as a grave sin
against pasta (as I found out myself while sharing a room with an
Italian girl ;)).
3. Add pasta to the
sauce, not the other way round. The pasta can be slightly undercooked
because it'll still cook in the hot sauce.
During the workshop we
could try about 17 different dishes. The portions were on the small
side and they had to be shared among 2 or more people at each table
but because there were so many of them we didn't leave the restaurant
hungry.
The workshop was actually
a review of the most popular Italian pasta dishes that can be easily made at home. I especially liked squid ink pasta with shrimps, pasta
with pesto alla genovese, and puttanesca, which I often cook myself,
while the least palatable was butter sauce with asparagus and
prosciutto crudo and homemade pasta, which tasted more like some kind
of dumpling than real Italian pasta.
Below you can find a few
dishes which inspired me to start my own culinary experiments. :)
Spaghetti aglio e olio
('spaghetti with garlic and oil') – an Italian classic. It requires
only 3 ingredients: olive oil, garlic and chilli or peperoncino
peppers. Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to try it but it
looked quite nice.
Puttanesca (it means,
well, 'a call girl' in Italian) – tomatoes, olive oil, olives,
capers, anchovy, and garlic. You don't need any extra salt because
the capers and anchovy are already salty. I usually add black olives,
instead of the green ones. It's delicious! :)
Crème fraîche with wild
mushrooms (porcino, prawdziwki) – the sauce smelled amazing but sadly our
table didn't have a chance to taste it :/
Primavera
('spring') – mixed vegetables with parmesan. Some recipes allow
also crème fraîche or chicken.
Arrabbiata ('angry') –
garlic, tomatoes, red hot chilli peppers. Very, very spicy, so we
decided to skip it. Just in case. ;)
Squid
ink pasta with shrimps - squid ink pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic,
and crunchy shrimps. Definitely one of the best dishes we tried. :)
Pasta
alla Norma (named after the opera 'Norma' by Vincenzo Bellini) –
tomatoes, aubergine (eggplant), ricotta salata cheese (replaced by Parmesan during the workshop), and basil. I really like the
combination of tomatoes and aubergine.
Pasta
with pesto alla genovese - pine nuts, fresh basil, garlic, olive oil,
Parmesan cheese – blend all ingredients and voilà! Homemade pesto
can be quite expensive (pine nuts cost around PLN 100 / kg) but it's
so much better than the store-bought. Simple and delicious! :)
Address: Piri Piri, Na Błoniach 7, Kraków
Website: piri.krakow.pl
Event website: here
